


somewhere i have never traveled gladly

by ohmygodwhy



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-24 13:41:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13214934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmygodwhy/pseuds/ohmygodwhy
Summary: Someone tries to kill you for the first time when you’re five years old. When you're fifteen years old, you leave your country to save it.(how a prince saves his people, and becomes emperor in the process)





	somewhere i have never traveled gladly

**Author's Note:**

> this doc is titled 'how to become emperor in 6 easy steps' and i think thats beautiful. anyways, i rewatched 64 whole ass episodes in like 4 days and then spit this out. what a good show like damn. a masterpiece. happy new year.

 

i.

Someone tries to kill you for the first time when you’re five years old. To be honest, it’s probably not the first attempt on your life—when you look back on it, the first one or two are fuzzy, because you were too young to remember, and the would-be assassins didn’t get very far, anyways— but it’s the first one you remember clearly.

You wake up to a hand clapped over your mouth and a knife glinting above you in the light cast by the moon through your open window. You fight back on instinct more than skill, because you’ve barely started any kind of training, biting the hand and jerking out of the assassin’s grasp as the knife plunges into your pillow. You kick back and squirm off of your bed, and that’s when Fu comes rushing in, taking the man by surprise and almost cutting his head clean off.

Your mother is worried sick, wraps you up tight and tells you you’re very brave. You don’t think you were all that brave— you weren’t even the one to fight him off, really— but you don’t tell her that.

The next time someone tries to kill you, you’re six and a three quarters, your next birthday right around the corner. It’s one of your older sisters who comes, this time. She’s eleven, the thirteenth daughter of the Emperor, and she puts a sword through your sheets and leaves a hole in your floor. People seem to love attacking you at night. Your guards seem to be very bad at their jobs. To be fair, you’re at your mother’s home in the countryside for the month, but they still have their orders.

You keep a knife under your pillow now, one your mother gave you the day after Fu killed the would-be assassin. Said to keep it close and keep it sharp, and the day after that, Fu gave you a second knife and said he would teach you how to throw them. He introduced you to his granddaughter, a quiet, grumpy-looking girl. You were also quiet, and not as grumpy as you were shifty-eyed, even at five, so you got along well. She threw knives at you until you learned how to dodge, and swore to protect you with her life. Which was kind of contrary to the knife-throwing thing, but that’s just how it was. You had to learn.

The point is, you can fight fine with a knife and you’re small enough that your sister isn’t used to having to swing so low. It’s a fight that ends with two of your ribs broken and a scar down your thigh and your knife pressed against her throat. You tell her that you don’t want to kill her, and she says she’d rather die here honorably than face the shame of going home unsuccessful. You close your eyes, and give her what she wants.

Seven years old and your vassals stop a hired foreign hitman before he can even slip into your room. Not before he takes out three of your guards, though, and a servant boy who’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s their blood that you can’t stop looking at once the man is dead and it’s safe to come out. You’ve seen blood plenty— your own and other’s —but you still don’t like it. It stains everything, and no matter how much you wash it, it never seems to wash out.

You’re poisoned when you’re eight, you and Lan Fan fight off the Emperor’s fourteenth son when the two of you are nine, and one of your guards tries to strangle you with your own sash when you’re eleven. You learn to sense energy, you learn to use a sword, and you learn to fight dirty.

You also learn geography and history and war tactics and Amestrian and some Drachman, just in case they really do invade Amestris someday and Xing needs to form a pact, or something. You think half the stuff they pack you with is useless— worth more to one of your older brothers who has no aspirations of becoming Emperor and wants to be a scholar instead - but you learn it anyways. You also train with Fu and Lan Fan and sometimes your mother, when she’s feeling up to it. Some of your older siblings are starting the training you begun when you were six.

You visit your father at his palace when his sister—technically your aunt, though you’ve never met her —dies of a sickness that even the best alchahestrists couldn’t get rid of. The funeral is grand, and the youngest of your siblings cry even though they don’t really know what they’re crying about. You’ve only met your father a handful of times, but you’ve heard that you’re one of his favorites— you fought off a man at five years old, is the rumor that’s been circling for the past few years, even though it’s only half true, and you’re a very skilled swordsman. He smiles at you and says, _who knew you would become one of my greatest warriors?_

By the time you turn thirteen, you think that maybe people learn that assassination attempts aren’t really working. By the time you turn fourteen and the Emperor is rumored to be dying, you think you don’t want to be one of his warriors. You actually think that you’re almost ready to take his place.

 

ii.

Your clan isn’t the biggest out of the fifty, but it’s not the smallest, by far. The people who live there are resilient and kind and you love going into town, even though your uncle says it isn’t proper for a prince to waste his time with commoners. You think that he’s a boring old man with no sense of humor, so you don’t care much what he says about it.

You wander down to the market for the first time when you’re nine, skipping your history lesson and shaking your bodyguards. Lan Fan and her grandfather are out training today, because again, you have lessons, so they aren’t here to catch you halfway out the door.

The people you meet are very nice, even though the gold thread in your robe is finer than the silk of the women’s dresses. An older lady who runs a little shop offers you some tea, and even though you don’t like tea very much, it’s good. She has a daughter who’s four years old and smiles like sunshine. A group of boys let you join in on their game—something where they just kick the ball around more than anything, and it’s the most fun you’ve had since Lan Fan threw knives at you.

Fu is not very happy when he finds you, and your mother was afraid someone finally succeeded in kidnapping you.

“You can’t just go wandering off like that,” she says to you, hands firm on your shoulders.

“Why not?” you ask. 

“It’s not safe by yourself,” she says, “You could get hurt.”

“Why would my own people hurt me?” you ask, smiling a little, because the idea is ridiculous, really, “We’re supposed to protect each other, aren’t we? Shouldn’t I get to know them?”

She doesn’t seem to have anything to say to that, even though your uncle and his advisers give you an earful later about how inappropriate it is to associate with the lower class so easily. Just smooths down the hair that’s come loose from its tie and says, _you would make a fine emperor, Ling._

Your clan isn’t the biggest, but as you grow, so do they. You talk Lan Fan into helping you sneak out sometimes—mostly she just follows you, frowning under her mask but not disagreeing with you. The shopkeeper’s daughter is five and then seven and then eight, and you crouch down and say she’ll be as tall as you, soon, and she laughs, something high and delighted. The boys grow and fill out and some of them join your personal guard, which is nice. More boys take their place, running in the wheat fields with the same old ball, and they still let you play their game, even though they know you’re their prince.

Trade is good, business is good, people look happy to see you when you run into town, ten and then twelve and then fourteen years old, and your clan prospers.

You don’t understand how anyone could rule over people they don’t know. A ruler’s duty is to his people, Mother has always told you, so how could you make decisions for them without knowing who they are and what they want? A ruler has to keep his people happy, has a duty to help them prosper, so they can trust and support him. You need unity to have power.

The fifty clans treat each other like enemies and the forty-three heirs exchange assassination attempts like birthday gifts. You’re great friends with your next-oldest brother and two of your sisters like to braid your hair and have meals with you, and you don’t know the names of half of the rest.

Xing is not unified - even if it is large and prospering and a threat to any outside country- not like your clan is. You think you want to change that.

When you are fifteen, you leave your country to do so.

 

iii.

Amestris really is some country. It’s full of loud noises and many soldiers and lots of smoke in the sky. It’s full of strange people, too, and strange creatures and strange politics. Siblings don't send assassins after each other, but you think that’s probably just a royal family thing, like not associating with lower class merchants or drinking very gross, expensive tea instead of enjoying the finer things in life, like Peddler's Noodles or Lan Fan’s knife throwing. You’ve always been the exception to many rules, so you almost enjoy the place, even if the energy of the place is all wrong.

“That is the ugliest building I have ever seen,” you say, peering up at some huge, gray, square thing in Central— a laboratory or a hotel or something— and laugh when Edward scoffs.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s ugly,” you repeat, “Everything looks the same here.”

And it does, almost. The colors blend together when you run, brown and grays and whites, with the occasional shop sign lighting up the streets. The buildings are tall enough to give good vantage points, at least. It’s all arranged very deliberately, you think. And the energy is off. There is something wrong with this place, a military man pretending to burn a woman alive for something she didn’t do so she can escape and a boy without a body.

It makes you miss home.

The people here are mostly kind, at least. Their ruler is not - their ruler is not even human, and doesn’t care for his people at all. He reminds you, very vaguely, of your father. You know that if he knew how to make one of these stones, thousands of lives compressed into one thing, he wouldn’t hesitate to do it. He wouldn’t care about his people.

“You’re no true king,” you tell him, and you don’t know if you’re talking to him or your emperor.

“There are no true kings,” he says.

Lan Fan cuts off her arm for you because you were too weak to make the difficult decision, and you don’t want to believe that he’s right.

 

iv.

Sharing your body with someone else is— _odd._ Which, isn’t surprising, really. It’s just very _very_ odd. It’s like watching the world through someone else’s eyes, except they’re actually your eyes, you just can’t really control them, or, you know, the rest of your body. Which is odd, and not that fun. The thing in your body can do whatever the hell it wants, including climbing random trees or putting its hand through someone’s whole chest with it’s claws. Bad thing is, you can still feel the blood on your—its—hand, warm and wet and horrible. It reminds you of Lan Fan’s blood soaking through your shirt and the way she screamed through her surgery.  
  
So you’re not having the best time. You chose this and all, because that Father guy was going to force the stone into your body either way and you weren’t all that ready to die and you needed the stone, anyways— it’s what you set out to do when you left your country for this one. And you weren’t sure what exactly would happen, but you weren’t expecting to end up a backseat driver in your own body, surrounded by thousands of tortured souls. It’s really something. Amestris really is an odd country. You didn’t like the feel of it from the moment you arrived.  
  
_Your taste is so tacky,_ you think—say, maybe. It’s hard to explain, because your physical lips don’t move but you can hear your voice, _Calm down with the leather,_ and you know Greed can hear it too because he says “it’s my body too, now”. Or thinks it. You don’t know.  
  
_It was mine first_ , you say.  
  
“Yeah, well, your sense of style doesn’t really suit me. And I’m in control, so I get to choose what we wear.”  
  
_These pants are too tight, can you even fight?_  
  
“Your pants were too breezy. These look better, and I can fight just fine.”  
  
_You are ridiculous._  
  
“You gave up this body,” he says, a blunt reminder. You frown. Or, do the stuck-in-your-consciousness equivalent. You think of your mother and your clan and your father looking frail on his throne and demanding immortality as a right to succession.  
  
_I guess so._  
  
And that’s that. You complain about the clothes every once in a while, and he listens but doesn’t change, and that’s how it is. He keeps the jacket because he says it’s _cool,_ and laughs when he finds out it wasn’t even yours to begin with.

It’s odd, but you adjust. You adjusted to trekking through the desert and smiling your way to information and the fact that there are walking embodiments of the seven deadly sins of man, so you can adjust to this.  

He doesn’t need to eat because he’s immortal, and you do, for some reason, but he seems to like eating fine, so he humors you. He _demands the finer things in life_ , he says it all the damn time, so when you eat you get the good stuff. Better than the hotel room service menu, even. Doesn’t compare to anything back home, but it’s good. You tell him so, once he takes control of your—his—the body again because he let you eat yourself because he’s odd, and he says _of_ _course it’s good, I’m not gonna put nasty shit in our body._  
  
It goes like: he drops something and you reach out to catch it and he laughs a little and pockets it or puts it back. You tie your hair up in the morning because he’s not used to wearing it so long, and he pulls the jacket on but you fix your collar and he does all the walking and fighting and stuff and stabs his old friend right in the chest with your hand, and that’s how it works. You work around each other, and with each other, and when you fight you bleed together enough that sometimes you aren’t sure which of you kicked out or hiked up the shield. It’s odd, but you adjust.  
  
You see all his memories, when they come rushing back, and he sees some of yours in your more vulnerable moments, a flash of you holding your vassal over your shoulder and fighting Bradley when Greed barely manages to stop the man from slicing your neck open. The thing about sharing a body is that it’s hard to hide from each other. Greed feels a longing and you feel it too. You panic when you think about your clan waiting for you to return, and Greed says to calm down, you’ll get back someday. You coexist.

You talk about your land under the light of a full moon, his—your—legs swinging over a steep hill because he’s very overdramatic. He says he wants the whole world, not just one nation, but he also says that you — _we,_ he says, like the word is something special— can go back to take the throne and _kick everyone’s ass, too, because to have the world you have to have all the pieces of it._

 _Deal,_ you say. _As long as my clan is saved and I become Emperor, you can do whatever you like._

 

v.

A monster lives inside of you and becomes a part of you and then he dies, and Fu dies, and Lan Fan loses her arm. Amestris is saved, but it is not your country. Your country is not saved yet. You don’t know how exactly you'll save it, but you got what you came for, so you have some idea of how to start.

Before all of this, when you are fifteen and telling your people that you’ll be leaving, you’re scared. Amestris is a large country filled with strange people, and you’ve never been outside of Xing before. Most of your siblings who’ve decided to look for the stone too aren’t leaving the country. You’re going to cross the desert twice.

Before even this, your mother finds you in your room, packing up what you need and cleaning your sword.

You haven’t told her your plan yet, but she says, “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

You look up at her, and she’s startlingly old. Older than she was when she wrapped you up tight when you were five and shaking. You suddenly feel so young.

Still, you nod and say, “Yes. I’m going to find a way to save our clan.”

She smiles a little, nods like she was expecting your exact words, “It’s a dangerous world, Ling. The desert is harsh, and people are harsher.”

“I know,” you say, “But I’ll be back. I won’t let you down.”

“I know you won’t,” she says, and she cups your face and presses a kiss to your forehead like you’re a child instead of a prince, “You will make me proud. And you will make an excellent Emperor.”

 

vi.

You leave with your head held high. You return just the same.

 

**Author's Note:**

> comment to bring me wealth and prosperity in 2018


End file.
